


Oh, those summer nights

by Kikinu



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: F/F, Friends to Lovers, Future Fic, Genderswap, Internalized Homophobia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-03
Updated: 2015-09-23
Packaged: 2018-04-18 19:24:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 20,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4717628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kikinu/pseuds/Kikinu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During Kenma and Akaashi's last summer of high school, Kenma and Kuroo will have to learn to deal with the knowldege that they're growing and they must decide whether they want their relationship to change its course or let life grow them apart until they're practically strangers to one another.<br/>Meanwhile, Akaashi has to accept her own sexuality and her feelings for Bokuto and decide if she wants to be the woman that her parents want her to be and in the procces deny who she really is, or be true to herself and take the risk of them hating her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> I want to thank [PhoenixGFawkes](http://archiveofourown.org/users/phoenixgfawkes) and EvyTM because without them this would have been impossible to write. They're amazing. I love you both and all that jazz. No me da la cabeza para seguir agradeciendo en inglés sin que Mamá Evy me pegue, así que peras las quiero mucho y juro que nunca más me voy a meter en una de estas cosas porque obviamente el inglés no fue hecho para que yo lo escriba.
> 
> Also, the awesome [HinaChama](http://hinachama.tumblr.com/) who made some beautiful art for this fic. She's a cutie <3

The sound of the cicadas has a strange effect on her. By merely hearing them, it is as if the temperature just goes up at least two degrees and an incredible amount of annoyance begins to tick her off, something that only a few things can do.

It is not as if she hates summer although everybody else seems to think otherwise. It has good things, like melons and watermelons and new games and surely a lot of other things that she can’t think of right now. But, as it happens with winter, the problem with summer is that it is _unbearable_. Unbearably hot, in this case.

When they were little, Kuroo used to take her out all summer afternoons to chase after cicadas and fireflies. They never kept them because Kenma was actually kind of disgusted by them and Kuroo used to feel a little guilty after seeing them trapped in a jar, but she supposes that the activity in itself wasn’t so boring. It is not as if she loved it, of course, but it wasn’t it wasn't among of the worst things her friend used to drag her to.

It was almost a daily ritual that one. Kuroo would arrive to her home unannounced every afternoon before snack time with something her mother made so they could eat it together. Sundays, being the day that Kenma hated the most, Kuroo’s mother would make her favorite apple pie.

“Eating your favorite food will make this day not so bad,” Kuroo explained to her once with her face dirty with apple filling.

After the snack, her own mother would take them to a nearby park, giving each one a little bug net for their hunting. Generally, they were alone but every once in a while Kuroo’s appealing personality would grant them a occasional game partner, who would quickly disappear after Kenma’s silence. For a while, she felt embarrassed for weirding out all Kuroo’s potential friendships, but as soon as she told her this, her friend would smack her on the head and tell her to not be dumb, that the only friend she cared for was Kenma.

When the sun started to go down and they had a few dozens of bugs trapped and released again, her mother would call them so they could go back home. If they behaved well, Kuroo would stay the night in her home where they would play videogames until one of them would fell asleep with the controler in her hands.

It’s been a long time since the last time they chased after cicadas.

The sound of laughter around her brings her back to reality just in time to see Taketora helping Lev untangle herself of the net. She sighs, wondering how the hell did the girl manage to end up in that position.

Although she could ask the same for herself. How the hell did she end up being vice captain, when she didn’t even want to keep playing after Kuroo’s graduation?

“Very well, girls, very well. Everybody, round up!” Coach Nekomata calls them, without any willingness to help Lev and Taketora. “It was a good practice, incidents aside.”

“It will never happen again, Coach!” Yells Lev, still with a foot in the net.

“I’m sure it will not, I’m sure. Tomorrow is sunday so I want everyone to rest well, you deserve it. We’re just one week away from the district preliminaries of the Interhigh and I have confidence in this team. That been said, we still need to be prepared, so Monday we will resume practice early in the morning. Don’t forget to hydrate yourselves, summer is treacherous for athletes. Clean everything and then you may go.”

“Yes, Coach!”

 

It’s dark when they finally leave the school, which tells a lot about how much they’re training. They say goodbye to the first years and some of the second years and she goes with Taketora, Fukunaga, Lev, Inuoka and Shibayama to drink something cool to the store near the school. They talk almost all at once and there’s always somebody yelling, but the outing feels too quiet to her, almost boring.

It happens a lot lately.

She parts from them at the train station and starts the trip home on her own. Before, she didn’t care about nobody living in the same direction as her; a little piece of quiet was a blessing. Now she wishes that a least one would actually live near her, so the trip wouldn’t be so monotonous and boring.

She exchanges a few texts with Shouyou, who tells her that Karasuno is going to the preliminaries’ finals with Aobajousai. She wishes her friend luck and promises her she will do everything she can so they meet again at Nationals. She spends most of the trip listening to music and remembering childhood summers with a weird sensation in her belly.

It is not until she gets out of the train that she notices she has a text from Kuroo.

**From: Kuro**  
_Hey, hey, hey, how was practice?_

She finds herself smiling although she isn’t sure why.

**To: Kuro**  
_Fine. Lev got tangled in the net._

**From: Kuro**  
_Whaaaaaat? Ok, you have to tell me how did that happen_  
_No, forget it, better not. You will tell me everything when we see each other again because it looses excitement over text._  
_Although it isn’t as if you have a lot of emotion when you tell things, but nevertheless._

She can picture her friend vividly, looking at her with annoyance because she’s unable to tell stories with the emotion that they deserve. She bites her lips to prevent herself from smiling even wider and people looking at her as if she were nuts.

**To: Kuro**  
_Tomorrow I don’t have practice, wanna come over? We can play videogames and I’ll tell you about practice._

**From: Kuro**  
_Boo, I wish I could but I can’t :(_  
_I have a test on Monday and a lot of things to study. This thing in which I’m a responsible university student is horrible._  
_Maybe next week?_

**To: Kuro**  
_Next week is the Interhigh._

**From: Kuro**  
_I know, but after it ends we can go all together to celebrate your obvious victory._  
_Kenma, this is Bokuto. Kuroo-chan has her cell phone taken hostage until she finishes explaining me this chapter of which I understand nothing. Good luck on preliminaries! :D_

“I’m home.” she says, although her voice sounds a little down.

“Dinner will be ready in ten minutes. I know you just came, but can you set up the table, please?” her mother asks her, without stopping mixing whatever it is she has on the burner.

“Sure.”

She’s not surprised that Kuroo can’t come to her home. It has been like this since she started college, which makes sense not just because it’s college but because now she lives with Bokuto, on the other side of the city.

Tokyo has always been big but she feels that, in the last months, it has got bigger.

She eats in silence and as soon as she can she excuse herself, she goes to her room. She lets herself falldrops herself on the bed with her school uniform still on, feeling a lot more tired than she felt after leaving practice.

When they were kids, Kuroo was very excited for the first day of summer first day because it was when all her favorite things started, so they used to have mini parties on their own to celebrate it. Their mothers would prepare them food and they would put on costumes and play. Or, actually, Kuroo would put a costume on her, because Kenma felt like it was too much work and wasn’t so much into it. Her friend looked like she was having a lot of fun dressing her up and, once, she told her that it was like having a real life sized doll. If any other person would have told her that she was a doll, it would have bothered her or at least made her feel embarrassed. But coming from Kuroo, it wasn’t something unpleasant. It was normal being her doll, sometimes it was even fun.

On her nightstand she has a photo of one the last First Summer Day parties they had, when they were ten and eleven years old. Kuroo is dressed as a witch, with a rubber nose with an ugly wart on the tip and her face painted green. Kenma is Kuroo’s black cat, with a plush tail stitched to an old pair of pants and a headband with cat ears that she still keeps at the bottom drawer of her closet.

She takes a picture of the photo and sends it to Kuroo, knowing that she’s not going to see it until morning given how slowly Bokuto learns.

She tries to distract herself by playing a little of her newest game. But then she remembers that Kuroo was with her when she bought it. Suddenly, she has to turn it off and hide her head under the pillow and try with all her will to ignore the horrible lump in her throat.

She misses her.

She misses Kuroo too much. After a few weeks, she was supposed to have grown used to her absence, to not seeing her everyday, to not going and coming back to school together, to not having to force her out of bed on Sundays, to not seeing her flirt with every human being she came across to, to not hearing her bad jokes and her strident laugh. Her life has an enormous Kuroo-shaped hole and there’s nothing that can fill it. She hasn't felt this bad since she was in first year and the third years bullied her.

She’s not fifteen anymore; Kuroo isn’t her only friend in the world anymore. She has Shouyou and the rest of the volleyball team, girls that she cares about and who she considers her friends. But it is not enough. Not them, nor the practices or all the videogames in the world.

It is not until that almost all the city is sleeping that she remembers how she has ended up thinking about her chasing bugs childhood.

This year the song of the cicadas can’t be heard.

***

Everybody agrees that she’s a more grounded captain than Bokuto, but it still feels wrong to have the title of her old teammate. May be her strategies and her cold mind are better, but she’ll never say that she’s better in the spot than her predecessor. There was something about Bokuto’s presence that made everybody feel like a undisputed winner and it wasn’t just her incredible skill in the sport.

“Gather up” she calls for them, barely raising her voice. Everybody obeys but she knows she doesn’t have the same charisma as Bokuto. Maybe it takes a little longer to gather the girls up but she makes everyone feel happy and special.

Keiji always felt a little special next to Bokuto.

She starts to give them next week’s training schedule, reminding them that with the beginning of summer and the Interhigh around the corner it’s important to be well hydrated and to practice as much as they can. Fukurodani has a legacy to maintain and they can’t allow the reputation of the team to drop.

While giving the speech and seeing the faces of boredom, fatigue and enthusiasm of his teammates, she begins to feel a little too self-conscious. She’s sounding too full of herself but she has already begun to talk and she doesn’t know how to end the disaster that is coming out from her mouth. This wouldn’t have happened to Bokuto. She would have yelled to train, to have fun and to win at them; she would have said that everything would end well, that they would be the best in the country.

She pictures her sleepy face hearing Bokuto’s speech. Bokuto used to tell her to not worry so much, to trust in her amazing skills and to toss the ball to her as much as she could, so she, Bokuto, could score a thousand points.

Bokuto and her complemented each other pretty well. The former captain used to give them all an adrenaline rush with just the blink of an eye and she managed to balance the situation by remembering them that they were just humans. She was the heart and they were brain of Fukurodani and now… well, the brain can’t function very well without a heart to pump blood to it.

“Tomorrow it is Sunday so you'd better rest. We will resume on Monday with all the planned activities. The first years are in cleaning duty today,” various grunting and groaning noises are heard from the younger ones, while the others sneer or throw scoffing gestures to them. “that being said, I’ll see you in two days. Everybody have a good weekend.”

It is not that she is in denial. She admits missing Bokuto as well as the other senpai. Outside the volleyball team, she doesn’t have a lot of friends mainly because she goes from classes to practice, and from practice to books. Her life isn’t much more than that. Most of the girls in her class think that she is too cold and distant (she even has heard them said she’s arrogant) and the boys try to “defrost the Ice Queen”; that is why she doesn’t try to be friends with them either.

Frankly, the latter seems ridiculous to her. Until now, boys haven't caught her attention and them trying to do all that nonsense to… win her over? It’s absurd. Bokuto also had several suitors last year, a bunch of idiots that thought the captain was their manic pixie dream girl, and every two or three weeks there was always one waiting at the end of practice to ask her out. Of course, Bokuto would turn them down as fast as possible trying not to be rude at the same time, but two minutes after they left she would have already forgotten about them.

And what was this about? Ah, right, her classmates. She is friends with just two: Haruno Chiyo, a girl with whom she also did junior high, and Matsuda Inoshi, a boy that lives two blocks from her. They’re both pretty quiet and studious for which they get along quite well and usually they don’t have problems between them. They have lunch together and on the days that practice is off, she goes back home with Matsuda. They have even gone to see some of her matches this last year.

Of course, it is not the same kind of friendship she has with Bokuto and the old Fukurodani team. To this day, Bokuto still appears as a surprise (which actually is not a surprise anymore) at the end of Wednesday’s practice to drag her to the city to be “normal teenagers”. She doesn’t get together with Matsuda and Haruno outside of school hours, unless it is for studying or to see some exhibition they really want to see.

On the other hand, she does everything with Bokuto: they go to the cinema for some Hollywood action movie or to the museum to see some exhibition of Egyptian art; they go drinking something at a Maid Café, stroll through the malls, play video games, browse bookstores, sing in a karaoke, go to the zoo ... she has done more with Bokuto than with his school friends and family together.

With Bokuto and the rest of the Fukurodani team, of course.

She feels a little guilty for having Bokuto separated of Fukurodani in her mind. Her club friends are very important to her but when it’s about Bokuto… the girl is special. She misses all of her senpai a lot, but her heart doesn’t ache for seeing their empty spots in the gym as it does with Bokuto’s.

Bokuto… Bokuto is kind of a light in her life. Yes, the girl is a little bad in the head and a lot of times she wants to shake her into reason, but before the entrance of the girl in her life, everything was grey and monotonous. Bokuto is the sun, the rainbow, the stars, the moon…

She frowns and keeps herself from hitting herself on the cheek. Where does all this cheap poetry comes from? It looks like Bokuto always finds a way of alter her life, whether she is actually there or not.

She hopes they can see each other soon, because otherwise she doesn’t know what could happen to her brain.

***

Kuroo’s absence is always a constant, even if it’s just in the back of her mind. However, life goes on and although she is homesick (despite not having moved from her own home), homework keeps piling up and so does practice.

Despite being very smart on an academic level, Kenma doesn’t has the best scores. It is not because she doesn’t understand or doesn’t know what’s being taught in class, but because she prefers to daydream instead of listening to her teachers and to play videogames instead of doing homework. She passes, of course. Her intellect is high enough to pass exams without studying for them, but her scores are still pretty low. The majority of her teachers have already given up on her but there’s still a few that try to play vocational motivators with her in the hopes she suddenly develops a passion for studying.

“You have a brilliant mind, Kozume-chan. If you just tried a little bet you could be, without a trace of doubt, the first in academic performance,” a frustrated teacher told her once last year.

Kenma doesn’t care about having the best scores. As long as she passes and nobody bothers her, it’s the same to her. She possibly wouldn’t even be in the volleyball club if it wasn’t because Kuroo had dragged her there in her first year.

Her parents also don’t demand a lot from her. They’re content with her not bringing failed tests and not skipping a lot of classes. Truth be told, she couldn’t have been born with parents more suited for her.

Her mother works as an accountant in a tech company and her father is a teacher at the same elementary school that she and Kuroo went. They’re both fairly quiet but she doesn’t feel them distant or anyhing like that.

Maybe it’s because Kenma herself is reserved. In her opinion, the perfect family evening they could spend consists of being in the living room, she playing some videogame while her mother reads a book and her father makes cranes that he’s going give to her students later. Sometimes she helps him, sometimes she starts playing some game with her mother, sometimes the three of them put a movie in the tv and enjoy it with the minimum comments being said. They never push her to study more or to do something that she doesn’t wants to, always supporting her and accompanying her in that silence that makes her feel calm.

It’s for all those reasons that she is surprised to come home one Monday after practice and find them both sitting in the kitchen, waiting for her with a lot of university pamphlets scattered over the table.

“But I don’t want to go to university”, she says after her mother passes her the third pamphlet.

“And what are you going to do with your life starting next year?”

She shrugs as she barely reads about the advantages of studying in Nagasaki. Nagasaki, a city far, far away from home.

“Well, we’re not gonna be here to support you forever, Kenma. If you want to take a year off to decide what you want to do, to travel the world or something like that, we could consider itt but you have to think about what you want to do with your future."

Kenma knows what she wants from the future. Living in the same house that she ever has, with her videogames and maybe one or two cats. Oh, and Kuroo as her neighbor or flatmate.

Her mom seems to read her mind, because she loses no time to destroy it.

"You can't expect Tetsu-chan to support you. She is doing a great effort between her job and university, she can't take care of you too. It's great if you two want to live together starting next year, but you would have to take a job or start studying to do so.”

"You never cared about my grades."

"And we still won't as long as you keep them up. We won't care either if you choose to go to university. But you have to start thinking about the future, Kenma.”

In almost eighteen years of being alive, Kenma has never thrown a tantrum. She has never fought with her parents nor done all the things teenagers do on movies, tv shows and manga. Now, however, she gets up of the table and runs upstairs to her room, shutting the door with a bang and not coming out when her parents call her.

**To: Kuro**  
_Growing up sucks._

**From: Kuro**  
_Agree. But, hey, at least we're not doing it alone, right?_

She wants to smile, but a small part of her knows that Kuroo is one of the things she has to decide about her future.

***

“Don’t you think Saotome is cute?”

She looks up from the book she’s reading. A few feet away, indeed, Saotome Misao is standing.

Saotome is pretty, yes. She always has her long dark hair tied in two braids with colorful bows. Her green eyes and her blushed cheeks, as well as her short stature, definitely make her seem really cute. Besides, she has good, uh, _attributes_ , so it’s often that people’s eyes (Keiji’s herself included) are drawn to her.

“I guess it is no coincidence that she’s the more popular girl in school”, she concludes, but when she turns to see her friends, Haruno is looking at her a little irritated and Matsuda stares at her as if she were a riddle he still can’t solve. “What?”

“I wasn’t talking about Misao, Akaashi. I was talking about her brother.”

Oh. Now that she looks again, next to Saotome is her brother, Atsushi.

“Don’t you have a boyfriend?” she asks Haruno, at which Matsuda tries to hide an amused smile.

“Yes, thanks for reminding me. But you don’t and I thought that maybe you would be interested in Saotome.”

She looks at the boy again. He’s a little taller than her, with his hair barely lighter than her sister and the same eye color. He’s also pretty popular, but he has never caught her attention.

She shrugs. “I don’t see anything special in him.” Haruno and Matsuda look at each other in a way she doesn’t like at all but chooses to ignore. “And since when we talk about this? I thought you knew that between school and the volleyball team I don’t have the time for this kinda things.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

There’s a few seconds of silence in which Keiji tries to go back to her book.

“So… how is Bokuto-san doing?”

“Bokuto-san?” She asks, puzzled. Her school friends asking about her volleyball friends is not something normal.

“Yes. University and work must be a lot, I’m sure you’re not seeing each other a lot lately”, says Matsuda.

“Well, studying has always been hard for her, but she says that her new volleyball team is incredible. And she doesn’t work a lot of hours, just two or three a day in her sister’s salon. She usually picks me up once a week after practice to see how the team is doing and to keep up with each other” Haruno and Matsuda look at each other again and this time her irritation is enough to ask. “What?”

“No, nothing.” Says quickly Haruno. “It’s just… um, it must be hard not seeing each other so much, right? I mean, we know you two were… _are_ pretty close and… it’s just that, well, you know we like Bokuto-san, right? It is OK with us if she wants to come when the three of us go out to make some project or when we go to the library…”

Matsuda nods several times, backing up Haruno in what she’s saying but Keiji is officially lost. Generally, she and her friends understand each other quite well but now she feels as if she’s talking with Bokuto herself in one of her worst times. Or worse, with any of Karasuno’s weirdos.

“Thanks? But I doubt that Bokuto-san is interested in going out with a bunch of high schoolers while they do their homework.”

“No, well, but if she wanted to spend more time with you and to use your time with us to do so, we’re cool with it.”

“Uh. Ok.” She says, more than anything so the talk ends once for all.

“Good.”

“Perfect.”

“Oh, Akaashi-chan?” Saotome calls her, approaching her with a shining smile. There’s no doubt she’s the most beautiful girl in school.

“Yes?”

“Sorry to bother you, but you’re the smarter person at school and I don’t understand the last subject the Math’s teacher gave us, could you explain it to me?”

“Oh, sure, no problem.”

Haruno and Matsuda look at each other again and Akaashi, not very discreetly, kicks the bench while leaving. Yes, she generally doesn’t explain to her classmates because she doesn’t have the time, but she supposes she can make an exception for Saotome.

That is to say, she has to be a good classmate every once in a while, right? It is not as if she’s doing it because it’s Saotome. Yes, she can be the prettiest girl in school, but it is not as if she were affected by that. It is not as if she were a boy or a… a...

“From where did you not understand?”

“From here on. It’s a little confusing, sorry.”

“Don’t worry, it’s normal to not understand it in the first time.”

She starts explaining it to Saotome, but half of her brain is busy with other things. There’s something in her talk with Haruno and Matsuda that has been echoing at the back of her head, but she’s not sure of what. Yes, _all_ the talk was strange, but there’s something in special that she can’t catch right now.

“Oh, so I have to replace it with the one next to it, right?”, Saotome asks.

“Yes, exactly. See? It’s not that hard, you’re pretty smart, Saotome-san.”

The girl giggled and gives her a smile that makes Keiji feel her face very hot.

“It’s all thanks to you, Akaashi-chan. Maybe one day we could go for a walk outside school. I would really like us to be friends.”

“Um. Yes, it would be nice. It’s a little hard for me because I generally have…”

“Volleyball practice.” says Saotome, giggling again seeing Keiji’s impressed face. “How wouldn’t I know that our volleyball team amazing captain has daily practice?”

“Amazing captain?”

“I think you’re a great player, Akaashi-chan. I have seen all your matches.”

She feels her cheeks on fire and thank God Saotome’s brother comes looking for her, because otherwise she doesn’t know what stupidity she could have ended up saying.

“We can make plans for going out another day, right, Akaashi-chan?

“Um, yes. Of course.”

She watches as an idiot at the girl leaving and it is not until ten seconds later that she realises that she was staring at her ass. She feels mortified but luckily enough everybody is very busy watching the Saotome siblings to notice her slip. The boys drool for Misao and the girls for Atsushi as if they were two gods fallen of the sky.

She blinks a few times as she watches her textbook because suddenly she notices what was off in her talk with Haruno and Matsuda. Shouldn’t she have thought of Atsushi when Haruno asked if “Saotome” was cute? After all, the siblings were standing next to each other, it shouldn’t have been a reason for her to assume that they were talking about Misao.

It’s not the first time that something like this happens. It has been too many times in which she has found herself ignoring the masculine gender and paying too much attention to the feminine one. She always thought that it was because she was looking for similarities with her peers as any teenager would do and, at the same time, because she was just a late bloomer in the matters of the heart. But she’s almost eighteen now, shouldn’t she start looking at the opposite gender?

It’s not really normal how much she looks at girls and how little she cares about boys. She’s not ashamed to admit which girls she finds attractive or not, she considers herself somebody who can admire the beauty in others but… shouldn’t the same thing happen about guys? And yet, it’s really hard for her to figure out which guys are supposed to be hot.

She suddenly slams the textbook and shuts symbolically her internal monologue. She doesn’t like where this train of thought is heading and there’s no much time left for her next class, so she better leaves it for another time.

(A little, tiny part of herself knows what’s happening, but Keiji is just seventeen and very scared, so it’s easy to ignore it)

***

She doesn’t get startled anymore when the stadium erupts in screams, but she does a little when she suddenly finds herself in the middle of a human pile of Nekoma players. Fukunaga is hugging her from behind while Inuoka presses her from one side and Lev from the other. She can hear the yells of Shibayama and Kazunari, the new first year starting players, but she doesn’t know in which part of the pile there are. What she does feel is Taketora’s hands pinching her cheeks while telling her how incredible she is. Any other time, Kenma would have maybe felt overwhelmed from all this, or annoyed for the excess of human contact, but now...

At first she doesn’t realise that’s her laugh because even with Kuroo or with Shouyou it’s a little hard for her to laugh openly. But yes, it’s her the one who laughs from happiness, the one who’s hugging her teammates because they have made it. They won the distrital tournament. They’re on the verge of nationals and it doesn’t matter that not Kuroo nor Kaii nor Yaku are here, they have made it.

They salute the rival team and pretend not to notice how Coach Naoi dries her tears. She suppose it’s a miracle that they don’t have half the team crying, moreover because even she feels overwhelmed by so many emotions. Few times volleybal has brought her such happiness, so much adrenaline, this need to scream, but it’s moments like this that make her not only not regret letting Kuroo drag her to practice so long ago, but she’s also grateful that it actually happened.

“Kenma, look” Taketora furtively tells them while they’re thanking the audience. At first, she doesn’t know what the captain is talking about, but then she sees her.

There, in the third row and doing and standing ovation with a smile that barely fits in her face, is Kuroo. All of a sudden, everything is a thousand times better and in her belly bubbles the urge to laugh and cry.

“You made it, you made it!” her friend yells at her half an hour late, hugging her tight and lifting her off the floor in the process.

Kenma giggles a little against her neck and doesn’t cry —because that would be too much— but she may feel a little like doing it.

“Congratulations” another voice screams and just then she realizes that Bokuto also went to see them.

“Thanks, Bokuto. Kuro, can you put me down?” She asks her friend, who does so giggling.

“Very well, team. I might not be your captain anymore, but I’m still very proud of all of you.”

“We’re still like the blood that flows so the brain can work, Kuroo-senpai!” Lev yells, jumping too high and hitting her head with the ceiling in the process. 

All her teammates laugh while couch Naoi scolds the girl and asks her to be more careful. Kenma… well, Kenma can take her eyes off of Kuroo. Yes, it has been just two weeks and a half since they last saw each other, but after having spent all their lives together it’s pretty hard not to see each other for longer than seven days.

Not only for her, apparently, because Kuroo is looking at her with the same intensity and with that smile so characteristic that for many years Kenma has known it means trouble, and adventures, and games. Kuroo suddenly laughs and hugs her again.

“I’m proud of you, Kenma” She whispers in her ear and maybe this time her eyes do water a little, but nobody is paying attention to her so she doesn’t mind. “Are you coming to my apartment to stay over for the night?”

She doesn’t even think about it before answering and sending a text to her parents telling them that she won and that she’s gonna spend the night at Kuroo’s.

***

Bokuto waits for her after every Wednesday practice. It’s clear when the girl finally sees Keiji because her face lights up with a big smile and she starts to wave with both arms, greeting her excitedly.

“Good afternoon, Bokuto-san.”

“Hey, hey, Akaashi! How are you doing?”

“Fine. A little tired from practice, but fine nevertheless. And you?”

“Fine now that I finally see you.” Says the girl, winking and nudging at her.

Despite herself, Keiji giggles a little, shaking her head gently. Her friend has never been quite right in the head but is good to see that some things never change, like that ability she has to light up her day.

“And where are we going today, Bokuto-san?”

“There’s a new coffee shop near the salon and people say it’s quite good. Kuroo went and she says the cakes are delicious.”

“Oh, really?”

There was a time when Keiji felt nervous at the mere mention of Kuroo’s name. The girl doesn’t make her bisexuality a secret and she was the first person that Keiji met who was open about not being heterosexual. Not only that, nobody seemed to care that the girl felt attracted to other women and Bokuto herself considered her one of her best friends.

Now, however, she thinks Kuroo may not be a friend but an acquaintance with whom she has a fairly good relationship and who takes care of Bokuto on a daily basis. God only knows that if it wasn’t for the girl, Bokuto would most likely live in the dirt and would be starving.

“Yep. They have chocolate cheesecake and I know it’s your favorite cake so I thought you would like it.”

“I love the idea, Bokuto-san. And I trust Kuroo’s common sense more that yours.”

That’s the cue for Bokuto to start throwing a tantrum, complaining and reminding her that she’s almost two whole months older than Kuroo and that she’s better at “adulting” than the other girl is. While Keiji disagrees with her as force of habit and to have some fun, they arrive at the new coffee shop.

Bokuto, with her cargo pants and her baggy Batman tank top sticks out like a sore thumb. Although she can’t imagine Kuroo in a coffee shop like this either.

The place is painted in pastel pink and it has curtains and tablecloths with cupcakes patterns in them. The waitresses have pompous light blue dresses with polkadots and all the clients (mostly women) look like taken straight out from a convention of lolitas.

“Akaashi, look! All the cakes are animal-shaped!”

Of course, Bokuto doesn’t seem to realize any of this. She looks very pleased with the place and she swears this is her new coffee shop. She said the same about the Owl Café and the Cosplay Café, but Keiji doesn’t plan to remind her of it now.

Their waitress seems a little put off when she goes to take their order, but she quickly recovers after seeing Bokuto’s excitement. It took Keiji herself some time to understand that Bokuto Koutarou is not what she looks like and that behind that look of a volleyball maniac was hiding a… well, a volleyball maniac but who also has other depths.

They spend a nice afternoon drinking herbal tea and eating fox shaped chocolate cheesecake (Keiji) and tanuki shaped pear pie (Bokuto). They chat about Fukurodani’s volleyball team and Bokuto and Kuroo’s new team; about how their old teammates are doing; about the Interhigh that’s starting; about the movie they saw last week.

Keiji loves her Wednesdays with Bokuto. Not just because she’s got to see her friend, which is already a lot, but because it’s the only day she can only be herself and not Akaashi Keiji, first in the prefecture, nor captain Akaashi, nor Keiji, Akaashi Mikoto and Satsuki’s daughter. It’s just Keiji, an almost eighteen-year-old teenager who likes volley and clasical music and to spend her time with Bokuto.

As every week, the day ends before she would like it to and Bokuto offers to walk her home. She feels a little guilty for making the girl escort her because even if they don’t live in opposite points of the city, they don’t live exactly nearby either. But her desire to spend every possible second in Bokuto’s company always wins.

“.. and then Kenma tosses the ball to Yamamoto and SWASH! Nekoma scores and goes to the prefecture tournament! It was awesome. I think Kuroo wanted to jump off the stands and throw herself onto Kenma.”

“I hope that on this tournament we’ll be able to go against Nekoma.”

“You sure will! It’s a shame that we never went against them while Kuroo and I were in the teams, but you and Kenma sure will! Oh, we’re here.”

They almost miss it but there is her home. She doesn’t really feel like going in (and she can see through the window, behind the curtain, her parents spying on them) but Bokuto is already pouting and if they don’t part ways now she’s not going to be able to make the girl go back to her own home at all.

“I had a really good time today, Bokuto-san. Don’t forget to study for your tests so you can come and see us play.”

“I wouldn’t miss it for anything!”

She waits until Bokuto is lost in the distance before going into her home where her parents are already waiting for her with distaste written on their faces.

“Keiji, we have already told you that we don’t like that girl.”

There’s a reason why Keiji has the best poker face in all the high school volleyball teams.

“I know, mother.” She says without moving one iota of her face.

“Dear, that girl looks like a juvenile delinquent and we don’t want her to push you down the wrong path. You shouldn’t spend that much time with her or your grades could be in danger.”

“Yes, father. Sorry, father.”

Not rolling her eyes, or snorting, or beginning to scream isn’t so easy as she makes it seem sometimes. But if she really externalized what she thinks about her parents opinions regarding Bokuto… well, let’s just say that that better not happen. After all, she has already become immune to what they say after hearing the same thing for almost three years.

“Besides, that girl looks like one of those lesbians that appear on television. What would the neighbours think if they saw you two together?”

She gasp and her eyes go wide open. That’s new.

“Exactly, sweetheart. You don’t want the neighbours to think you’re… _that way_.

“N-no.”

“Then, please, stop hanging out with that girl.”

She puts a stupid excuse so she doesn’t have to eat and goes running to her room. Do people really think that they…? I mean, yes, Bokuto has never had a boyfriend nor has she heard heard her talk about any boy, but that doesn’t mean she’s a lesbian!

Do people really think that they…? That they…? Hey face burns and she hides it against the pillow. Suddenly, her talk with Haruno and Matsuda makes a lot more sense. Oh, heavens, do they really think that Bokuto and her…?

She feels like dying. How did she not notice before? She has to do something before this ends badly. She must tell Bokuto that they can’t keep seeing each other so often, that it’s not normal to spend all that time together, that...

The cry of an owl in heat is heard, the tone Bokuto assigned herself on Keiji’s phone.

**From: Bokuto Kōtarō**  
_¡Hey, hey, hey, Akaashi!_  
_I forgot to wish you luck in the tournament this weekend, even though I know you don’t need it._  
_You’re an awesome captain and you have an incredible team, so relax and enjoy your last Interhigh. Besides, I’ll be cheering for you in the stands!_  
_Everything is gonna be ok, I believe in you :)_

And just like that all her worries fade away, at least temporarily. Bokuto is a light in her life, she can’t let her parents’ crazy thoughts keep her away.

(the tiny part inside of her that knows exactly what’s happening becomes a little bigger, but it’s still easy to ignore it)

***

**From: Shouyou**  
 _GOOD LUCK KENMA YOU’RE SURE GONNA WIN!_  
 _BAKAGEYAMA ALSO WISHES YOU LUCK_

**From: Mother**  
_Good luck, honey._

**From: Father**  
_Don’t forget that I love you and I wish you good luck._

**De: Kuro**  
_Don’t let the blood clot and kick their asses ;)_

She is thankful for all the texts, but the only one that gets her smiling is Kuroo’s. She thanks her parents and then sends Shouyou a text reminding her that they will see each other at the joint training next weekend.

To Kuroo, she sends a photo of the whole team smiling.

If they win this match they’ll qualify for nationals, plus they’re going to face Fukurodani to see which team is the best in the prefecture. Everyone is nervous and Lev looks like Shouyou considering all the times she has gone to the toilet. She knows Kuroo is gonna be looking at them from the stands and that soothes her nerves.

“Ok, girls, roundup” Taketora calls them, her face more serious than it has ever been. “We're like the blood in our veins. We must flow without stopping. Keep the oxygen moving and your mind working. That’s what Kuroo-senpai would have told us. But Kuroo-senpai is not here and neither are Yaku-senpai nor Kai-senpai. We’re the ones that are here, we’re the ones who get to play and _we’re_ the ones that will leave everything in the court. Whatever happens today I want you to know that I’m proud of you.”

Kenma looks surprised at Taketora. When did the girl grow up so much? She’s not going to lie, that speech got to her. And it looks she’s not the only one, because everyone looks with watered eyes to their captain in silence.

Of course, it’s Lev the one to break the silence.

“Yamamoto-senpai! We’re proud of you too!” sobs the girl, throwing herself at Taketora and making both fall to the floor.

“Argh, Lev! Get off me, you’re suffocating me!

“Yamamoto-senpai!” yells Inuoka, throwing herself at the girl too.

“Kenma! Help me!”

Kenma smiles and, making use of her power as vice captain, she claps her hands.

“Come on. We have to win, right?”

“Kenma-senpai!” yells Lev, but when she tries to throw herself at Kenma, Kenma manages to dodge her, making the girl fall head to the ground.

The rest of the team smiles and Taketora pats her on the back as a thank you.

“Nekoma, win”

“Yes, captain!”

***

Nekoma is about to lose.

She really thought they had an opportunity of playing against each other in this tournament, but with eleven points behind and the other team at match point, it is almost impossible for Nekoma to recover and win. Next to her, Bokuto chews on her lip. Next to the girl, Kuroo is looking at the match with a serious expression, her hands gripping the edges of her chair. It must be hard to look at her old team in that situation and being unable to do something.

In the court Haiba and Inuoka are able to block the ace of the other team and now they’re just ten points behind, but the odds of Nekoma winning are still almost none. They’ll need a miracle to pass to the next round and she’s sure they have run out of them.

Losing is not something nice, everybody knows that. Even those who don’t even try at all suffer the bitter taste of defeat. And those who tried it all? She’s not sure what’s worse. Everybody says that when you work hard and put all of you the feeling isn’t so bad, because you know that there was nothing else you could have done, but ...

Keiji thinks otherwise. As someone who always tries hard and gives as much as she has, losing is ten thousand times worse. That is, if you gave all of you and you lost anyway, it is because you were not good enough; because you’ll never be, and there will always be someone better than you and because fairytales aren’t real so not always the good ones win.

And, are there really good ones and evil ones? Both teams have worked hard to get here. All those girls who are now leaving their lives in the court have struggled from day one to be able to wear that uniform, to stand on that court, to touch that ball. For both teams, losing will be a blunt wound. The only difference is that Keiji personally knows the Nekoma girls and wants them to go as far as possible. 

In the court, Kozume tosses the ball to Haiba, who spikes it so hard that it’s impossible to block it. Now there’s just nine points between both teams. 

Keiji wants to believe in miracles, she wants to believe that sometimes the ones who we believe the heroes of the story win, that those girls with whom she has been training so many years will get to the next round and will be able to play against her team, that they will go to the Nationals. She really wants to believe, but…

Surely, it could be just her but the ball seems to make a louder sound than usual as it hits the court when Yamamoto is blocked. The girl falls to her knees while the opposite team celebrates screaming of happiness and Keiji can see how a couple of the Nekoma girls start to cry in silence.

Kozume approaches Yamamoto and helps her to stand up. Behind them, Haiba and Inuoka dry their tears with their arms and Shibiyama pats them on the back while she herself tries not to cry. The libero seems a lot shorter than she already is standing between those two giants, but she doesn’t seem to care. Little by little, Nekoma lines up in front of the net to greet their rivals and it’s a painful situation to see.

It is even more so when they approach the stands to thank the public and Keiji is able to see more clearly the despair on the girls' faces. She hears a sob near her and she doesn’t need to look to know that it’s Kuroo.

This is horrible. Why did they stay to see the Nekoma match? Why did they have to sit with Bokuto and Kuroo? Why can’t the ones they wanted to win win just for once?

Nekoma disappears through one of the side doors of the gym and Kuroo gets up from her chair.

“Are you ok, dude?” asks Bokuto, looking at Kuroo with a hint of concern and that’s what ends up breaking Keiji’s heart a little.

“I’ll survive” answers Kuroo, forcing a smile. “Hey, do you mind if Kenma comes home to stay the night?”

“Not at all. In fact, I think I’m gonna go see my parents, it’s been awhile since I stayed the night at their house.”

“Great, thanks. See you tomorrow.”

Both girls fist-bump and Kuroo finally retires, her back stiff and an aura of sadness surrounding her.

“Poor Nekoma.” says Kirisaki, Fukurodani new vice captain.

“They’re gonna be alright.” says Bokuto, standing up. “They’re strong girls. Now, I think you all should be going home to rest so tomorrow you’ll be in top conditions, right? I’m gonna come see you, but don’t forget that most important thing is to have fun, score as many points as you can and win, do you agree?”

“Bokuto-san is right, at least in the resting part. You have played very well today, see you tomorrow.”

“Yes, captain!”

Bokuto smiles to her and Keiji believes her when she says that everything is gonna be okay.

***

“I’ve already called your parents. I told them that you’re coming home with me.” is the first thing that Kuroo says to her, giving her a sport drink.

Kenma nods and is thankful that she said goodbye to the rest of the team in the locker room, because Lev and Inuoka had already calmed down and surely seeing Kuroo would make them cry again. In fact, Taketora would have cried for sure too and the same would have happened to Shibiyama and Fukunaga and… she closes her eyes tight, breathing slowly. Maybe she’s not that much into volley as her teammates are, but seeing them sad is something she can barely stand.

Kuroo takes her bag and puts it on her shoulder, making Kenma remember when they were little and that the condition for Kenma to go to practice was that Kuroo should carry her things.

“I can with that.” she says, because she’s not little anymore and doesn’t need to be forced to attend practice.

“I know, but…”

“I can with that.”

They look at each other a few seconds and she doesn’t know what Kuroo sees on her face, but she finally sighs and passes she her bag. It is the last thing they say during the whole trip, where Kuroo is dedicated to listening to the music on her phone and Kenma plays Zelda in her DS. They travel standing next to each other without talking or looking at the other. Anybody would think they have fought or that they’re angry, but…

Peace. That’s what Kenma feels right now. Travelling with Kuroo this way was her daily world and getting to do it again, even if it is for just one afternoon, calms her more than anything else could have.

At one point, a seat in front of them empties and, after looking at each other a little, Kuroo sits on it. Kenma sits on her knees, which is something that they have done a million times in the past. Being Kuroo larger than her is much more easier for Kenma to sit on the other girl’s knees. Because they are both girls, people usually don’t stare at them. Kenma keeps playing and she feels how Kuroo rests her chin on her shoulder, watching how Kenma is doing on the game. Sometimes Kuroo comments on something she hadn’t notice, but observes in silence for the most part.

The apartment complex where Bokuto and Kuroo live has twenty floors and they live in the eighteenth. Kuroo generally makes her climb the stairs until she is exhausted, but this time she seems to be kind to her and they take the elevator from the beginning. For some reason, Kenma is not entirely happy with this.

“You can shower first. All my clothes are big for you and Bokuto’s are gonna look as a sack of potatoes on you, but I think you forgot something last time you came, so I’ll see what can I get you. Wanna eat something in particular?”

As an answer, Kenma shrugs. Kuroo doesn’t sigh, but she seems about to.

“Ok. I’m gonna order a pizza.”

Kenma nods and goes into the bathroom. The girls’ apartment is, all in all, big for them, but it’s still small enough that Kenma can perfectly hear the conversation Kuroo’s having on the phone.

The apartment, that has two bedrooms, a room which functions as kitchen, living room and dining room at the same time, and even a small bathroom, has just one luxury: the bathtub both girls insisted on having. However, this time Kenma chooses to shower, letting the hot water splash against her tired muscles and relax them. She tries not to think about the match and her teammates, but the crying faces of Lev and Inuoka come to her mind, and so does the image of Taketora trying not to cry while asking for forgiveness to the team for not being a good captain.

She feels a lump in her throat and she lets her forehead rest against the tiling. She doesn’t hate losing on itself but everything that goes along with that.

She comes out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped almost two times around her and finds a change of clean clothes on the door. She doesn't remember having using them recently, but somehow they must have ended at Kuroo’s house.

She still has her hair wet as she goes to sit down to have dinner, and her friend looks at her frowning.

“How many times have I told you to dry your hair properly? It doesn’t matter if it’s summer, it will be bad for you anyways.”

“It’s hot.”

“Says the person who showered with scalding water.”

Kuroo grabs a towel and stands behind her, drying her hair like when they were little. Well, not so much as when they were little, because this is a common situation between them. Kuroo might seem a carefree girl who takes life with ease, but appearances are clearly deceiving because she is in fact one of the people who worries more about the people whom she cares about.

When she’s done drying her hair, Kuroo sits beside her on the floor, her back resting on the couch. They have the television on a movie that none of them is watching, full of explosions and gunfire. In a moment of weakness, Kema lets part of her weight rest on Kuroo’s side and it is almost automatical the way the girl puts an arm around her.

They have never needed a lot of words to understand each other. Yes, Kuroo has always known what she wants and needs, has always been ready to make her feel better by just looking at her a few seconds, but it also works the other way around. Kenma just needs to take a look to know what’s wrong with Kuroo and, after so many years of friendship, she knows how to help. Maybe they can’t always solve all of the other’s problems, but at least they’ll make the burden lighter.

They eat in silence watching the movie and letting the explosions and the shootings fill the room. There, snuggled next to Kuroo, eating a greasy pizza and drinking the pear soda that Bokuto has bought, Kenma feels contained.

They sleep in the same bed as they have done since she can remember. Kuroo and Bokuto don’t have a guest’s futon; even if they did, Kenma wouldn’t use it. Whenever they had a sleepover, they would have slept in the same bed, chatting until one or both of them fell asleep. That is something that hasn't changed even if they have. Kenma wouldn't know what she would do if they did change.

There, with the AC at it’s maximum power and tucked under the covers because both of them are unable to sleep uncovered, Kenma finally lets her guard down.

“It’s horrible.” she says and as an answer Kuroo just holds her hand tight. “Losing is horrible even for me but… the girls… they have trained with all their might. _We all_ trained with all our might. And I wanted… I wanted to play against Shouyou in the Nationals. I like playing against Karasuno. And against Fukurodani too. I wanted… I wanted to make you feel proud…”

Her voice finally breaks and Kuroo draws her close, hugging her tight and Kenma hides her face against the girl’s chest.

“I _am_ proud of you, you hear me? You need to win nothing to make me feel proud of you. You have grown up a lot, Kenma. Even if you don’t want to admit it, you have fun playing, you always go to practice, you’re one of the team. I’m proud of you for all that, not because you win or lose.”

“I wanted to win.” she admits, her voice sounding broken against her friend’s clothes.

“I know, I know.”

They separate a little, just enough to look each other in the eyes, their noses brushing. Kenma can count all the eyelashes surrounding her friend’s eyes, who holds her with legs and arms as if making a fort between her and the outside world.

Here, where it is just the two of them, Kenma feels that she can finally let all her ghosts out.

“I’m scared.”

“Of what?”

She opens her mouth to answer, but just a sob comes out and she has to shut her eyes tight to try and calm herself. Kuroo hugs her again and this time Kenma hides her face against her neck. The girl makes soothing circles on her back and Kenma hates herself a little. It has always been the same. She’s perfect bottling everything up and keeping all her fears, annoyances and concerns for herself, but when her wall breaks even a little, it’s like taking the plug out of a tub.

Kuroo is used to this, obviously. They have known each other all their lives and for the same time they have been friends, how could she not be used to this?

“I don’t know what I’m gonna do next year. My parents told me I have to think of something, but… I… I don’t… I don’t want things to change. I’m not good at functioning as a normal human being and…”

“Of course you’re a normal human being, Kenma, Jesus. You being introverted, liking videogames moe, all that doesn’t mean…”

“I don’t know how to talk with people and…!” she bites her own lip so she doesn't cry again and Kuroo lets her, the urge to say something obvious in her face. Kenma thanks her for letting her vent, even if she knows Kuroo wants to yell a couple of things to her. “I’m gonna end alone.”

Kuroo looks at her without understanding. Of course she doesn’t understand, that never has happened to her. Kuroo attracts people like bees to honey, she has never been in a lacking in friends. Bokuto, Tsukishima, Sawamura, all their all senpai from Nekoma, all the schools that they have practiced with, her new classmates and teammates in uni, the girls from her new job at the bookshop… all of them have become friends with Kuroo. She doesn’t have problems interacting with people, never has. Kenma, instead...

For many years, her only friend was Kuroo. Only when she joined Nekoma Kenma was able to start making new friends, like Taketora and Fukunaga. And it wasn’t until last year that she managed to make a friendship that had nothing to do with Kuroo.

But next year she leaves Nekoma. For how long is she going to keep in touch with the girls in the team? One, two, three years? And with Shouyou? The girl has potential to become a pro and she’s aiming for it, will she have time and desire to keep being friends with someone like her when high school is over, when university is over?

And Kuroo?

How long until Kuroo grows tired of her? Of having to act as an interpreter between her and the rest of the world? Of having to endure all her eccentricities? How long until she starts favoring spending more time with her classmates than with her? How long until life grows them apart?

Kuroo bites her shoulder without much force and Kenma lets out a whimper mixed with a sob.

“That hurts.”

“You were thinking stupid things and I had to stop you.” Kuroo says, then giving her a noisy kiss on the cheek. “Yes, I don’t know how it’s to be you the same way you don’t know how it's to be me. But I do know something, Kenma: growing up sucks for everyone. Do you think I know shit of what I’m doing? I’m improvising on the fly while praying for things to work out. And about you ending up alone, that’s never gonna happen. You’ll be stuck with me for the rest of your life, you better get used to it.”

“At some point you’re gonna get tired of me.”

“No, dummy, I won’t. First, because I find every little thing of you fascinating, and if after eighteen years that still happens it’s because I’ll definitely won’t get tired of you anytime soon. It’s more likely for you to find new friends and deciding that I'm a nuisance than the other way around.”

The worst thing? Kuroo really believes what’s she’s saying, even if Kenma thinks is pure nonsense.

“I could never get tired of you, what are you talking about?”

“I don’t know, about the same thing you’re talking about. And, about all that other things, you’re gonna find more and more people with whom you’ll have affinity. Besides, do you really think that you’re gonna get rid of shorty so easy? I think the ginger shrimp is gonna keep looking for you even after becoming world champion with the Queen.”

“The Nekoma girls…”

“Yes, we’re not gonna see each other as much as we did before and perhaps we’ll end up talking with them just two or three times a year, but that doesn’t mean they’ll stop being our friends. Taketora will sure send you proof of her first boyfriend and of all those who come after him. Fukunaga is gonna send you long and detailed mails specifying everything she has done in the week and Kai will ask you to do that so she makes sure that you are eating well.”

“Lev and Yaku are gonna make us their wedding bridesmaids, right?” 

“Sure, and… wait, Lev and Yaku?”

Kenma lets a giggle out seeing Kuroo’s surprised face, making her smile again.

“See? That’s how I like it, you smiling, But, really, Lev and Yaku?

“I don’t know, it looks like that to me.”

“Jesus, I’m sure our senpai weren’t as gay. Since when is there so many same sex relationships in volleyball? But, back to what matters, nothing can keep me away from you, okay? You can kill somebody and I’m gonna help you hide the body. You can tell me I’m an idiot and I’m gonna tell you you’re right and ask for forgiveness. You can do anything and I’m gonna always be with you, because I love you and nobody can change that, do you understand?”

“All right.”

Kuroo smiles at her without breaking eye contact. They are so close, their noses brushing, their legs entangled and their chest touching, and all of the sudden Kenma feels a warmth that has nothing to do with summer and she knows that she spreads a little, just a tiny bit, if she just tips her head and pushes up a little her and Kuroo’s lips would brush and...

Kuroo gives her a kiss in the forehead.

“I’m happy we agree. Now to sleep, it’s been an exhausting day for both of us.”

Falling asleep takes her more than it should because the only thing she can do all night is listening to Kuroo’s heartbeat. There’s a door that she thought she had closed a long time ago but now she realizes that it has always been wide open, waiting for her to cross it. As if deciding about her future weren't enough, Kenma is realizing she has to consider adding something else to it.

Which place does she really wants Kuroo to occupy in her life?

***

The thing is that she and Kozume never have got along particularly well. It’s not that they don’t get along at all, but they never seemed to hit it off like Bokuto and Kuroo did. While both are rather reserved, they’re too different and they never find something to talk about so they end up with some awkward and silent moments.

Up until now, every time there was a joint training camp, Keiji ended up practicing with Bokuto and Kuroo (and lately, more often than not, with Tsukishima) while Kozume went away to play some videogame or to train a little with Karasuno’s 10.

Now Bokuto and Kuroo have graduated, Karasuno’s 10 has become Karasuno’s 7, and maybe it has nothing to do with it but when she crosses path with Kozume alone it feels weird.

“Kozume.”

“Akaashi.”

The girl looks at her with those big golden eyes that have always made her a little nervous. Even if the color is similar to Bokuto’s, they couldn’t have been any more different. Bokuto’s eyes are warm, innocent, full of mischief and eagerness to move. Kozume’s, however, are cold and analyzing, as if they were sorting and storing every detail they see. Keiji doesn’t like people who are more cold minded than she is.

Cats and owls are both animals with a certain mystic tint but who rarely cross paths.

“Congratulations on going to Nationals.” Kozume says, her eyes looking at her for a few seconds before deviating to a side.

It’s something the girl often does, as if it were impossible for her to hold somebody’s gaze for more than a couple of seconds. Keiji appreciates that, she doesn’t imagine herself neither holding those piercing golden eyes without a chill running down her back. She has never told this to anybody, but Kozume reminds her of some of those creepy supernatural creatures in horror movies.

“Thanks. You also made it to a good position.”

“Not good enough.”

Silence engulfs them again and she should make an excuse quickly and go away because this is already awkward. She really should; she has always done so and the few times she didn't, it was Kozume the one to escape from the situation.

However, they’re both still here, eyeing each other, alone in the corridor as if they were waiting for something but none of them is sure of what. God, in these kind of moments she really misses Bokuto and Kuroo being here.

Oh.

“How is Kuroo-san doing?”

Kozume’s eyes quickly focus on her again, but they don’t look cold and calculating anymore. Keiji could even say that the shadow of a smile has formed on her lips.

“Good. She keeps looking for a way to cause problems and getting out of them untouched, as always.”

“Yes, that sounds like something Kuroo-san would do. If it weren’t because I know she makes sure Bokuto-san eats at least two times a day, I would be worried for them.”

“Kuroo cooks well. Koutarou says that until she doesn’t eat everything on her plate Kuroo doesn’t let her leave the table, so you don’t need to worry.”

Another thing that bothers her a little about the girl, it’s the ease with which she calls people by their given name. At least, she treats Keiji with a little more of respect, but in the beginning it made her a little moody hearing her senpai’s name coming from the lips of a girl she barely knew.

Now things are different. It feels good talking about Bokuto and Kuroo with Kenma, the latter looking more lively than she ever has on this camp. Not even Hinata has been able to get her to talk for so long. Jesus, she thinks that they haven't kept such a long conversation in all the time they have known each other.

“Oh, yes, Bokuto-san took me to that coffee shop a couple of weeks ago. It’s nice, but I didn’t figure it was the kind of place Kuroo would go usually.”

Kozume tilts her head a little, those piercing eyes analyzing her without even trying. In another time, she might have felt nervous or irritated, but the talk is good for her and she’s going to let it pass, at least for this time.

“Kuroo likes cute things even if she looks tough. You and Koutarou go out very often?

“Once a week, why?”

Kozume shrugs.

“Kuroo wants to take me to that coffee shop, she says their apple pie is delicious.” Kozume says, ignoring her question.

“I haven’t tried it, but I trust Kuroo-san’s taste. Perhaps she gets a little carried away when she’s with Bokuto-san, but she has a good head on her shoulders.”

Kozume’s smile grows slightly more pronounced, a shy pride peeking through her eyes..

“Kuroo is pretty mature. Kotarou is too, just in ways one might not expect.”

“I think it’s the first time I hear someone say Bokuto-san is mature. By the way, sorry if I have stopped you on your way. Were you going somewhere?

Suddenly, Kozume’s smile disappears and she blushes a little, her eyes deviating to a side. She looks like a deflated balloon, all her enthusiasm gone and an aura of sadness surrounding her.

“I got lost and I don’t know where my team is. Kuroo used to find me and take me to the others.”

Oh.

They go silent again and it’s a horrible contrast to the excitement from just a few seconds ago, which makes her feel a little guilty. She can relate to Kozume after all, she has also been a little lost (and not just figuratively speaking) without Bokuto around.

“I think they are in the resting area. I was thinking of going there but before I wanted to go to the restroom. If you don’t mind waiting for me, I can take you there later.”

Kozume looks back at her, the neutral and impenetrable expression stuck on her face just for a few seconds before making room for a small grateful smile.

“Thanks.”

Keiji smiles back at her. Yes, she and Kozume have never been really close, but perhaps this is a good time for things to change.

She’s about to tell her that maybe they’ll could go see together Bokuto and Kuroo’s first match when they enter the restroom, but the scene inside it makes her brain shout out a tiny bit and, by Kozume’s red face, she assumes the girl is in the same position.

“Ngh.” it’s the only thing that comes out of her mouth.

“Tsukki!” yelps the girl whose name she doesn’t remember, distancing herself from Tsukishima and quickly closing her jacket.

“I hate the whole world.” it’s Tsukishima response, her annoyed expression out of tune with her red face.

“Oh, gee. Tsukishima, Yamaguchi, again? Put 100 yens in the make out jar when we get back to Karasuno, I can’t believe you never learn.” it’s Ennoshita’s bored comment when she comes into the restroom right after them.

Without thinking about it Keiji grabs Kozume by the wrist and takes her to the rest area. In her mind she can picture Kuroo telling her that those thing weren’t made for the eyes of her beloved and innocent Kenma, but the truth is that seeing those girls making out was a lot even for Keiji herself.

“Kuroo is right. Volleyball wasn’t this gay.” it’s Kozume only comment and Keiji couldn’t agree more.

***

Akaashi doesn’t let her go until they reach the rest of their teams. The girl has her face, ears and neck so red that Kenma wouldn’t be surprised if she suddenly started to actually blow steam from her ears.

“I’m sorry you had to see that.” Akaashi tells her, too agitated from the small walk they have just made.

“It wasn’t your fault. Besides, um, I think Karasuno’s captain should be the one who apologizes. Or Tsukishima and her girlfriend.”

“Girlfriend?” Akaashi asks, livid.

“Yes. Ah, Shouyou has told me many times that they usually run onto them, um, making out in public areas. Or, well, not necessarily in public areas, but at least in places where they end up getting caught by their teammates.”

Kenma feels her own cheeks burning. Akaashi is busy avoiding eye contact, but Kenma feels as much or even more mortified than her. Shouyou had warned her that that could happen, but...

It’s not as if Tsukishima and Yamaguchi were doing something too shady. They were fully clothed (yes, Yamaguchi had her jacket open, but underneath she had her shirt on) and they were just kissing. Tsukishima was holding Yamaguchi by her waist and Kenma is sure she has never seen the girl so relaxed since she knows her.

But finding two people in an act so intimate is always embarrassing, no matter how innocent it may have been. At least, that’s what Kenma thinks. She has always avoided finding people in intimate situations.

Besides, she isn’t so much in denial as to not admit to herself the real reason why Tsukishima and Yamaguchi’s relationship makes her so flustered. Childhood friends, they fell in love and started dating… yes, she knows why it makes her nervous. Why it makes her _jealous_. Especially considering how things could be if everything had taken a different course after that time...

Kenma was fifteen and it was the day before beginning studying at Nekoma. The nerves of starting in a new place turn her stomach into knots and she felt like throwing up. Kuroo, knowing her better than anyone, had invited herself to spend the night at her home.

They went to sleep on the same bed. Kenma never liked physical contact with other people, but Kuroo always was the exception to many of her rules.

In the midst of her panic, Kuroo had hugged her tight, giving her small kisses on the forehead as she did so often. They were hiding under the covers, as always, and Kuroo smelled as the apple shampoo they used in her house, like all the other times she had stayed at her’s.

Everything seemed like normal, but Kenma felt something different, a kind of electric wave that prickled the hair on her arms, triggered, perhaps, by the new school year about to begin.

To the date, she is still not quite sure what prompted her, but a second Kuroo was kissing her forehead and the next one Kenma lifted up her face, letting her lips being the ones to receive her friend’s.

There was a moment of absolute stillness in which Kenma is still confident that even her own heart stopped. A second in which Kuroo tightened a little the grip on her but didn’t try to reciprocate that excuse of a kiss. A second in which Kenma asked herself if she was stupid enough to screw the only relationship that was important to her.

Then the second was over and suddenly Kuroo was kissing her with her whole mouth, both of their bodies coming to life and moving frantically and haphazardly against each other.

She would like to say that that night is just a blur on her mind, but in all honesty she has it engraved on her mind with all its details. Kuroo kissing her on the lips, clumsyly and inexperienced but with hungry kisses, kisses that suddenly were going down her neck and then up again. Hands that sneaked under her shirt, legs moving against hers, hands that suddenly were sliding under her underwear and…

It happened just once.

The morning after they woke cuddling like usual, her mother’s voice from the kitchen reminding them that if didn’t hurry they would end up being late for school. Neither of them said anything, neither of them did anything to confirm what had happened the night before.

Kenma waited in vain for weeks for Kuroo to bring up the subject, but that never happened. She even thought it all had been just a dream, but every time she closed her eyes, every time her own hands followed the path that Kuroo’s had the memories came back with the same force. She never was someone who remembered dreams.

That had been real.

Kuroo never wanted to talk about that. She, out of cowardice, never has the courage.

And there were Tsukishima and Yamaguchi, two girls with a similar past to them, but who managed to take their relationship to the next level.

“Kozume?” she blinks a couple times and then turns to Akaashi, who looks at her a little worried. “Are you okay?”

“Um, yes. Thanks for bringing me here.”

“No problem. I’m sorry… I’m sorry you had to see… to see…”

Akaashi’s face blushes again and Kenma lets out a little smile that only Kuroo would be able to see.

“It wasn’t your fault. I think it affected you more than me.”

Akaashi is about to tell her something but Lev is suddenly next to her, lifting her up by the waist and telling her how worried she was about her. Taketora, neither slow nor lazy, throws a bra at her (which she doesn’t want to know to whom it belongs) like a slingshot, knocking Lev off and leaving Kenma to drag her back.

Volleyball really didn't used to be so gay, and it sure wasn’t such a circus.

***

Just when Keiji was starting to forget what she saw, Fukurodani has to play a practice match against Karasuno. Of course Tsukishima and her _girlfriend_ (Yamaguchi?) are both starting players and of course Yamaguchi becomes bright red after seeing her.

Few times has she played as bad as on this match, which coincidentally it is the first one they lose against Karasuno. The team don’t blame her or anything, they barely make some jokes about it, but she isn’t Bokuto and it’s not that easy for her to recover from having played so bad.

Her lack of concentration it's completely related to seeing Tsukishima and Yamaguchi making out, she can't deny it.

It is not as if she was stranger to same-sex relationships. She has seen them on TV in some shows and films, in animes and in the yaoi mangas her classmates read, once in awhile on the street. As she said before, she knows about Kuroo and has heard about a couple of short lived relationships with girls she had. But one thing is to hear it or see it on TV and another is to witness it in the flesh. 

Besides, as with Kuroo and Nekoma, none of Karasuno’s girls seem particularly alarmed with two of their teammates being… _lesbians_. Not only Karasuno looks at ease with the situation, Nekoma and also her own teammates from Fukurodani don’t look in the least disturbed.

Is Keiji the only one that… that…? It’s not exactly as if she were disgusted, because she’s not. She doesn’t think it’s _bad_ or anything like that, but… it makes her feel uncomfortable? A little. Or not, not exactly. It makes her feel strange, uneasy but not sure of what. A weird anxiety that makes her nervous, alert.

It isn’t the first time it happens.

Hours later, in the room she shares with the rest of the team, she turns around and around on her futon trying to sleep but it’s useless. The same thoughts haunt her mind, that tiny voice in her head that tries to tell her something that she’s still too scared to hear.

How would it be? If she was… not that she is, because she’s not, but… How would it be if she was… like that? If she was… if she liked girls. Would her team also be okay with that? Would they still treat her as they always do? She thinks of Bokuto and a little smile forms on her face. Yes, Bokuto would treat her the same, the girl wouldn't see a reason for treating her any different.

Kuroo surely would try to give her advice, although it’s not as if the girl was an expert casanova. As far as she knows, Kuroo just had one girlfriend and one boyfriend, the first one in her second year of high school and the last one for a few months last year. Keiji knows that Kuroo had gone out with a several people, but by what the girl tells, she isn’t very lucky on those things.

She doesn’t need to ask herself about Haruno and Matsuda, the chat they had that time makes it clear that they would support her and continue as usual. The same would happen with the rest of the team, if she can judged by what she saw that afternoon.

And her parents? What would they say if she told them that she is…?

No, stop.

She’s not, so she doesn’t need to keep asking herself that. She doesn’t need to worry about screams and the phrase _you are a disappointment_ because she’s not. Because if she were… if she were...

Her parents would hate her. She doesn’t has any doubt of it, there’s no way for the opposite to happen. There wouldn’t be words of support, not even a time to come to terms with it and accept her. Her parents would let clear how disappointed they would be on her, the _shame_ they would feel. How repelled they would be.

She feels a lump on her throat and like crying but it doesn’t make sense. Why is she so sad? It’s all hypothetical. She doesn’t need to picture these things because she’s not like that. She’s not.

She can’t be.

***

Kenma should have imagined that Kuroo and Bokuto had something on their hands. She knows Kuroo since they were babies, how could she fall on this trap? She did the same while convincing her to join the volleyball team, why did she fall this time? Ah, right, Kuroo had promised her apple pie and the new Mass Effect.

Kenma is weak. Or maybe she isn’t, but Kuroo knows her weaknesses. What she wonders is how Bokuto got Akaashi to fall on this trap.

“Pleeeeeease.” Bokuto begs pouting and clasping her hands in a prayer.

Next to Kenma, Akaashi looks with a hint of irritation at Bokuto, but the little fond smile she has is undeniable. _Oh_. That makes sense.

“Bokuto-san…”

“Oh, c’mon, Akaashi, don’t be like that. It’s our volatile friend, you’ll not leave her alone on that special day, right?”

Kenma takes out her game again, hoping now that the dynamic duo has their attention on Akaashi they’re going to ignore her.

“Four teenage girls alone a whole weekend away from the city… Bokuto-san, please tell me you understand that’s not the best idea ever.”

“But it will be fun!” Bokuto yells, leaning across the table to take Akaashi’s hands on her own. “We can go to the festival and use yukatas and take a walk, we’re gonna make so many memories together!”

“That sounds nice, but…”

“Akaashi, please. I really want to do this with you.”

Kenma has to look away from her game a few seconds, because she has never seen Bokuto so sincere and as calm as right now. She supposes Akaashi hasn’t either, because the girl has her cheeks and ears bright red and Kenma recognizes a lost battle when she sees it.

Judging by the shit eating grin on her face, Kuroo has also recognized it too.

Akaashi sighs but then smiles a little.

“I’ll ask my parents, which doesn’t mean they’ll say yes.”

“Yay! You’re the best, Akaashi!” yells Bokuto, hugging the girl over the table which does look like a pretty uncomfortable position. Akaashi doesn’t seem to care, however, judging by the giggle she lets out.

She feels Kuroo’s gaze on her, so she does her best to blend in with her seat. She fails miserably.

“What about you, Kenma?”

She wouldn’t say this is Kuroo and Bokuto’s worst idea ever, because they have had a lot of _catastrophic_ ideas, but she’s not really sure if she feels like doing it. It isn’t because it’s an ugly trip: taking the train to Shimane on September 19, going to the festival held there, spend the night in a hotel, celebrate Bokuto’s birthday and the end of Summer on Sunday and come back home on Monday.

Problem is that would mean leaving her house, getting into too many crowds, having Kuroo and Bokuto without a real adult around to stop them from getting into trouble...

There’s just one thing she’s really interested about that trip. Coincidentally, it's the same thing she hasn't seen much lately and that she misses too much to bear.

She pauses her game and sighs, resigned, while at the same time Kuroo’s smile grows.

“Do I have another option?”

“Nop.”

“Wooohooo! We’re gonna have such a great time! Akaashi, you have to bring a yukata! You all have to! We can take pictures! It’s gonna be so much fun!”

“Ohoho, we can play makeup artist and hairdresser and practice what your sister taught us. Kenma is the perfect doll, we always used to do it when we were kids.”

“Nobody goes near my hair.” Akaashi warns them, putting behind her ear one of her long dark locks.

If Kenma were her, she wouldn’t let Bokuto near her hair neither. Not that she worries a lot about those things, because to be honest she cares very little about all that aesthetic nonsense, but Akaashi’s long and beautiful hair is something to admire. She most likely would look like Sadako with a hair like that. Or worse. Like Kageyama.

“I would never touch you hair, Akaashi! Perfection cannot be improved!”

Akaashi blushes a little, but she smiles at Bokuto. Kuroo furtively looks at her, waving her eyebrows and making Kenma roll her eyes. Yes, she already noticed it, Kuroo doesn’t need to make it that obvious. Most of all because Kenma is pretty sure Akaashi herself hasn’t noticed it yet.

Under the table, Kuroo rubs her foot against Kenma’s, winking at her. Despite herself, Kenma gives the girl a small smile.

Maybe this trip isn’t such a bad idea after all.


	2. Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for updating this late! I wanted to update sooner, but work and school and... sorry u.u It's a short update, but I'm gonna try and make the next one as soon as possible!

Keiji is sure this trip is one of the worst ideas Bokuto and Kuroo have ever had, but seeing Bokuto smile makes it impossible for her to say something. She restricts herself to walk and nod to everything, or so her friend tells her, smiling every once in awhile.

Her parents are going to disown her when Keiji tells them she wants to go on a trip for a whole weekend with Bokuto and two of her friends.

“It’s gonna be awesome, Akaashi! We’re gonna see fireworks and play in the festival and stay up late talking and…”

Bokuto suddenly stops and Keiji is forced to do the same.

“Bokuto-san? Is everything okay?” she asks, turning with great concern to the girl.

Bokuto looks at her with candid eyes and a little wistful smile. Keiji feels out of breath.

“It’s gonna be as it was before, don’t you think? Like when we were in the same team and on training camps we stayed up late talking. I miss that a little, you know?” Bokuto admits, changing her weight from one leg to the other. “Living with Kuroo is awesome and my new team is full of amazing people, but… it’s not the same.” The girl laughs, but it sounds more tired than happy. “I’m sorry, I know I’m not usually like this, but… I don’t know. I guess I miss how we used to spend almost every second of the day together. Am I being selfish for wanting to monopolize your time?”

Keiji wants to answer. She wants to, really. She wants to tell Bokuto that she’s not selfish, that she can monopolize her and her time as much as she wants. That Keiji misses her presence too in every practice, every day. That she never felt what she feels for her for any other friend, for _anybody_. Keiji wants to say a thousand things but there’s a lump in her throat that doesn’t let her and a fear that she doesn’t dare to admit yet.

Keiji wants to answer her but she can’t, not with words. So she does the next best thing.

She shortens the distance between them in two steps, hugging Bokuto tight and hiding her own face against her neck. Bokuto hugs her back and they stay like that, embracing each other, the summer heat burning their skin a little but seemingly dull against the fire they carry inside them.

Keiji knows she’s crying a little, but when they pull apart Bokuto doesn’t say anything about it, the girl just wipes her tears with her thumbs and kisses Keiji’s forehead, smiling brightly at her, making it impossible for Keiji to not smile back.

When Bokuto leaves Keiji at her doorstep and her parents start to make a scene about it as usual, Keiji ignores them and goes straight to her room. She’s not sure how, but she has to convince her parents to let her go on that trip.

For Bokuto, for herself, for the both of them. She wants to go, she _needs_ to go.

***

“How is Tetsu-chan doing?” her mother asks her that same night, while they’re having dinner.

They haven’t talked about the “future” topic again and it could be said that they’re in good terms once more. However, the colleges' pamphlets are still lying on the counter, a constant reminder that at some point she will have to make a decision.

“Good. Oh, she and Bokuto want us to go on a trip to a festival on Shimane at the end of summer. They also invited Akaashi. She was Bokuto’s setter at Fukurodani.”

“That sounds like fun.” her father tells her, smiling, and then he takes her mother’s hand in his. “Do you remember our first trip?”

Her mother giggles, which makes her look ten years younger.

“Yes… At first I thought my parents weren’t going to let me go. We were going with Tetsu-chan parents, because we were already friends at the time, but they still thought it was scandalous that I was going with my boyfriend on a trip. Of course, we’re not so old-fashioned, we don’t have problem with you going on this trip.”

Kenma doesn’t understands how that has anything to do with them not being old-fashioned and her going on this trip, so she’s a little confused for a few seconds, although her parents don’t seem to notice.

“Do you need to buy anything special for the trip?”

“I don’t know, we still have a month and a half left.”

“Okay, but be sure to prepare everything well. Surely everything will look romantic and adventurous to you, but it’s not the same to sleep curled up because it’s cold than because you just want to.”

“Uh, okay?”

Kenma feels as she’s missing an important part of the conversation and she doesn’t like it at all.

“I remember that you and Akane promised her parents you were going to share a room.” her father says, lost in reminiscence.

“Yes, but you know Momotarou. It’s not for anything that I’ve always said that he and Tetsu-chan are so alike. He persuaded me to switch rooms with him so it looked more like we were two couples and not just four friends on a trip.”

Yes, that does sounds like something Kuroo’s father would do. However, something tells Kenma that she and her parents are having two differents conversations and she’s not sure she wants to find out why.

“You have to take advantage of this time on your own and use it to see how you manage at living alone and together for more than just one night,” her mother says.

“Okay...?”

“We used to do that and it helped us a lot. I know you two have known each other your whole lives, but it’s not the same living together than seeing each other everyday at school and staying at each other houses once in awhile.”

And then she gets it.

Her parents think that she and Kuroo are dating.

She looks at them with her eyes wide open but they doesn’t seem to notice the state in which they left her.

“You’re so grown up… it seems like it was just yesterday when Tetsu-chan came to dress you up.”

“Akane always said you two were going to be together forever,” her father remarks.

“She reminds me that everyday. You know Akane likes to brag when she’s right.”

Her parents keep talking but Kenma is about to have an anxiety attack and she has to excuse herself and go to her room so her parents don’t notice it and get worried. It’s not just Kenma’s parents who believe she’s dating Kuroo, her friend’s parents also think the same.

How did they end up thinking that? How did she not realize it before? Kenma can’t believe she didn’t notice it, how could this escape her? Her parents and her best friend’s parents, those who are also like family to her, think she and Kuroo are dating.

How long have they thought like that?

She has to send Kuroo a text and tell her. She has to go down and tell her parents that it’s not what they think. She has to… to...

She _needs_ to talk with someone.

**To: Shouyou**   
_Can you go online on Skype for a while?_

**From: Shouyou**   
_Sure!_   
_Did something happen?_

She hesitates for a bit, but even if Shouyou is not the brightest person alive, she _is_ one of the more perceptive ones. Nobody is going to ever take Kuroo’s place in her life, but Shouyou is able to make her feel better when nobody else can.

**To: Shouyou**   
_I have a problem and I don’t know what to do._

**From: Shouyou**   
_I’m coming back from practice with Kageyama, in ten minutes I’ll be home and we can talk._   
_Don’t worry, take a deep breath and everything will be okay :)_

Kenma wants to smile and believe her, but she’s not sure of anything anymore.

***

The following Wednesday, when she gets out of practice, it isn’t Bokuto who is waiting for her.

“Saotome-san?”

“Hello, Akaashi-chan.”

Saotome looks beaming, as always, and Keiji feels self-conscious for few seconds about her appearance. She hasn’t showered yet and her hair is barely tied in a messy bun which is too big because of how long her hair is. Keiji is all sweaty and wearing her shabby gym clothes, a complete mess next to Saotome who has her uniform all clean and smells like strawberries.

“Are you waiting for someone?” Keiji asks, trying in vain to fix her clothes.

“For you, actually.”

Saotome smiles with a hint of shyness and Keiji feels herself blush.

“For… for me?”

“Yes. I was wondering if you want to go for a coffee with me. Remember how I told you I hoped we could be friends? Well, I thought about waiting for you today so we could go out.”

“Oh, I didn’t know you had club activities until this late today.”

“Wednesday I don’t have club activities. I stayed just to wait for you.”

She knows it’s impossible, but Saotome’s smile suddenly seems to have a seductive tint and Keiji’s brain suffers a short circuits, making it impossible for her to talk for a few seconds and Saotome giggle.

“I would love to, Saotome-san. If you wait for me while I shower and change back to my uniform we can go wherever you want,” Keiji finally says, fighting against her blush.

It’s obvious she doesn’t have a lot of friends, because it’s ridiculous how nervous she gets with just a friendly afternoon out.

“Oh, what a shame.”

“What?”

“Nothing, nothing. I’ll wait here, Keiji.”

Her name coming from Saotome’s mouth echoes in Keiji’s head while she showers in haste. She doesn’t really understand what’s happening but, although she generally cares very little about her classmates opinions of her, she _really_ wants Saotome to like her.

Before exiting the locker room Keiji looks at herself in the mirror one last time, making sure her looks are as good as possible. She decides to let her hair down because she knows it suits her better and she puts on a little of lip gloss. She wishes she would have brought the perfume her parents gave her for her birthday.

Taking a deep breath for courage, Keiji finally opens the door to leave the locker room so she can meet again with Saotome...

… who is standing next to Bokuto. Both girls glance at each other and Keiji is sure she never saw Bokuto look at someone with so much annoyance.

Keiji feels caught red-handed, as if she had done something she shouldn’t have, and very guilty. She can’t believe she forgot her Wednesday with Bokuto, and having both girls there makes her very nervous and want to turn and go back inside the dressing room to never leave it again.

“Good afternoon, Bokuto-san.” Keiji greets her friend, smiling at her as if nothing happened while her own nervousness eats her from inside. 

Bokuto’s not smiling back is a bad omen.

“Akaashi, are we not going out today?”

The problem with Bokuto is that she is very transparent. Keiji knows the girl is trying to hide it but it is crystal clear that she feels hurt for being put aside, and Keiji feels like the world's worst asshole.

Bokuto might be very volatile, but her mood swings are mainly related to volley and her studies, _never_ with Keiji.

“I… I…”

“I was telling Bokuto-senpai that we’re going to grab a cup of coffee, right? I’m sure you two can go out any other day.”

Saotome smiles at her even if she looks a little unsure of what Keiji is going to say and Keiji has rarely felt so awful as right now. Bokuto is one of Keiji’s best friends and she doesn’t like seeing her sad or to put her aside, but she’s just starting her friendship with Saotome and she accepted the girl’s invitation and...

“I’m… sorry, Saotome-san, but Bokuto-san and I always go out on Wednesday. I forgot what day it was, I’m really sorry. Maybe tomorrow?”

Saotome smiles at her but Keiji doesn’t need Kozume’s perceptive powers to know that it’s a forced smile.

“Sure, no problem. Maybe tomorrow. Bye, Bokuto-san. Bye, _Keiji_.”

And there it is her name again, making Akaashi blush. Beside her, Bokuto makes an annoyed pout and starts walking towards the city, forcing Keiji to follow her quickly.

“Bokuto-san…”

“You don’t need to bare with me, Akaashi.”

Because Bokuto doesn’t look at her in the face, she speeds up her pace, and Keiji just wants to punch herself for being such an idiot.

“I’m not baring with you, Bokuto-san. I really forgot it was Wednesday and…”

“I know I’m high maintenance.” Bokuto interrupts her, without stopping. “I know my mood swings are problematic and that… that you have other friends and that you want to meet more… _normal_ people, having friends who don’t need you to babysit them. I don’t want to be a nuisance to you, Akaashi, nor to drag you with me against your will. If at some point you felt forced to go with me somewhere or to do something… if you don’t want me to come and get you after Wednesday's practice anymore, or to not go to the trip… _It’s okay_. You don’t have to… you don’t need to..."

Bokuto sounds broken and Keiji hates herself. She doesn’t know what to do to stop all of this. Words fail to her once more, Bokuto walks faster and faster so keeping up with her is hard and… and...

Keiji throws herself on Bokuto, hugging her tight and making her stumble, almost falling to the floor.

“There’s nobody, _not one single person_ I’d prefer to spend my time than you. I like Saotome, but I choose you everyday.”

She hears Bokuto sob a little and then the girl turns around, hugging her by the waist. Keiji expects her to yell that that makes her happy or to throw a tantrum complaining how Keiji shouldn’t have forgotten the “great Bokuto” so easily, but Bokuto just holds her tight. 

Maybe, despite Bokuto seeming so simple minded, the girl is also having a hard time with this thing of growing up.

“She calls you Keiji. You don’t let me call you Keiji.” Bokuto complains, pulling apart just enough to show Keiji her pouting face.

“I never said you can’t call me Keiji. I would love for you to call me by my name, Bokuto-san.”

“Really?” asks Bokuto, grinning like this was the best day of her life and Keiji can’t do anything else beside nodding and giggling. “Really… _Keiji_?”

Keiji feels something weird in her chest and all over her body and she doesn’t know why she felt strange when Saotome called her name, because when Bokuto does the same she feels as if her whole world was being shaken off.

“Really, Bokuto-san.”

“Yaaaay! Let’s go, Keiji! You need to see this new coffee shop I found the other day! It’s my new favourite!”

Bokuto holds Keiji’s hand and starts running without stopping talking. Her hand is warm and Keiji doesn’t let it go even when they slow down and she doesn’t need to hold her to not loose sight of her.

***

“How do I look?”

She might not care a lot about fashion stuff, but the yukata Kuroo is trying on is an insult to all good and fair in the world.

“No.”

“Ah? But it has…”

“No,” she repeats, going back to her game and ignoring how Kuroo sticks her tongue at her.

They have been trying on yukatas for the last hour. Or rather, _Kuroo_ has been trying on yukatas for the last hour while Kenma plays _Love Life_ and ignores the saleswoman. Kuroo told her that they needed to buy the yukatas for the festival, that they needed to do it today and that she wasn’t taking “no” for an answer. The problem is that nothing has caught Kenma’s attention so she opted for playing and waiting for Kuroo to decide.

It has been _years_ since she wore a yukata and even if she tried to force herself inside her old one... there is no way she’s fitting into something three sizes smaller. When Kuroo is done, Kenma is going to grab the first thing she finds, she’s going to take it to the festival and then she’s going to keep it on a drawer for ten years or for when Kuroo and Bokuto decide to embark them all on another of their crazy adventures. At least Kenma knows she’s not going to grow up anymore so she’s not going to need to buy another one.

“And what about this one?”

Kenma looks up, ready to tell her friend that whatever she wants is good for her when she really _sees_ Kuroo.

The girl is wearing a red yukata with white little leaves on it and a black obi, her hair wild as usually and her foot bare. Kuroo smiles at her calmly while she waits for Kenma to answer and Kenma… Kenma thinks of what Shouyou told her.

_How are you going to know what Kuroo thinks if you don’t ask her? How is **she** going to know what you think if you don’t tell her?_

“I like this one. It highlights your beauty.”

Kuroo gasps at her, her eyes wide open and a blush colors her cheeks, which soon also colors Kenma’s. When Kuroo notices this she starts smirking, but the blush is still there.

“Well, it must be really pretty to receive such praise. I’m gonna take it,” Kuroo starts going back to the dresser, but she retreats midway. “Oh, and, Kenma?”

“Yes?”

“Before you pick the first thing you lay your hands on, I already put aside a yukata that’s _perfect_ for you.”

Kenma sighs, stepping into the dresser Kuroo indicates her. Inside there’s a yukata and she hates to admit it, but _it is_ perfect for her.

“Hey! Why haven’t you tried the yukata on?” Kuroo asks her ten minutes later while they’re waiting to pay.

“I did try it.”

“No, I didn’t see you try it.”

“I tried it _inside_ the dresser. Maybe you don’t know it, but they’re for that.”

Kuroo pouts.

“You’re mean to me.”

“No, I’m not. And that’s why I’m gonna take you to the cinema,” she says, as casual as possible, picking the bag with her purchase and leaving the store.

Kuroo follows her, confused.

“To the cinema? Is there a movie you want to see?”

“Not really, you can choose. I pay.”

Kuroo looks at her with a hint of suspiciousness, but they finally end up going to a cinema two blocks down. They watch a movie with gunshots, explosions and aliens. Even if it’s not what Kenma had in mind, it’s okay anyway.

When they leave the cinema they go to eat to a real restaurant, one of those with waiters, menus and tips to be left. It’s not really expensive and they end up splitting the bill, but at least it’s different from what they usually do . Then they go to eat an ice cream and walk through downtown, taking pictures of kittens they find on their way and talking about everything and nothing at the same time.

By the time they start going back, Kuroo has already noticed what Kenma is trying to do, because she insists on walking her back and even if Kuroo smiles with unquestionable happiness, Kenma feels nervous.

Maybe she misunderstood things. Maybe Shouyou is wrong. Maybe she’s about to fuck up everything and lose the most important person in her life. Maybe...

Kuroo takes her hand, looking amused at her.

“Stop thinking so hard, if you frown too much you’re gonna grow premature wrinkles.”

“I don’t frown.”

“Yep, you do.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Yes~”

They argue until they reach her doorstep and suddenly her belly is a bundle of knots and she doesn’t know what to do. She turns to Kuroo, who looks at her expectantly and Kenma opens her mouth to say something, but nothing comes out.

Why is she so bad at this? She can’t do this, she just can’t. The future is terrifying and Kenma is scared; she can’t take the risk of losing Kuroo, it doesn’t matter what Shouyou says.

“Hey, I’m not sure what you’re thinking, but don’t start overthinking things.”

“I’m not overthinking things,” she lies, making Kuroo laugh.

“Yes, you are.” Kenma sticks her tongue at Kuroo, who sticks her tongue back at Kenma at the same time she takes her other hand. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

“I had a great time today.”

“I had a great time too. You know that… that I always have a great time with you.”

“I know, but sometimes you’re a little hard to read and I don’t know what to do.”

Kuroo takes a step towards her and Kenma takes a deep breath, her eyes wide open and fixed in Kuroo’s. Kuroo takes another step and suddenly their faces are close, their noses touching.

“I don’t know what to do sometimes either,” Kenma confess, her voice just a whisper. “I don’t want to do anything that bothers you, but… but…”

“It’s okay, now I get it. Don’t worry, we’re gonna be fine. I promise.”

Then Kuroo closes the small gap between them and kiss her.

It’s soft and calm and Kenma thinks about that time so many years ago, in the difference between those frantic kisses and this one. Kuroo lets her hands go and holds her by the waist, pulling Kenma a little closer to her. Kenma doesn’t know what to do with her hands now that they’re free, so she just locks them behind Kuroo’s neck because that’s what people do in movies, right?

When they pull apart Kenma feels the world trembling and she’s glad that Kuroo is still holding her by the waist, because otherwise she’s sure her legs would get weak and she would end in the floor.

“Woah,” she whispers, without being able to open her eyes.

“You said it,” Kuroo says just as low, and then the girl goes back to kissing her.

They spend a long time like that, sharing soft and languid kisses, kisses that say more than Kenma’s words could ever say. Yes, it’s important to externalize what she feels, but the two of them never needed words to say the most important things.

Later they’re going to have a long a deep talk about things, they’re going to put a name to everything and they’re going to bring out that night already three years ago, but now the only thing they want and can do is kiss.

That night Kenma sleeps with a smile of pure happiness in her face, her phone forgotten in the chat she had with Shouyou.

**To: Shouyou**   
_We kissed._

**From: Shouyou**   
_!!!!! sdjvknsdjk !!!!_   
_SDJKVNSDJKNVJK_   
_CONGRATULATIONS_   
_HOW IT WAS?_

**To: Shouyou**   
_I feel as if I just won the Pokemon League using just my starting Pokemon._

**From: Shouyou**   
_!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!_   
_THAT’S AWESOME, KENMA. I’M SO HAPPY FOR YOU :DDDDDDDD_

**To: Shouyou**   
_Thanks._   
_I am happy too._

***

The girls on the other side of the net scream and jump and hug each other, crying of happiness. Keiji looks at them, her body exhausted and her mind blank. She feels her stiff muscles hurting and a lump in her throat that doesn’t let her breath, something making her eyes itch. Keiji hears someone crying behind her and yet she doesn’t turn, she can’t do it.

Without looking at any of her teammates, Keiji asks them to line up so they can shake hands with the opposite team. At the side of the court she can see the Karasuno girls getting ready to play, almost all of them with sad faces. Suddenly Keiji is mad at them, how dare Karasuno pity her and her team?

She ignores Ennoshita when the girl tries to tell her something and later the coach is going to scold Keiji for turning her back on the captain of a friend school, but right now she doesn’t care at all.

They lost.

No, it is not just that. They never won a National and, even if it always hurts, she was ready to lose at some point. To what she wasn’t ready for was losing on the first match.

All the team showers and dresses in silence, the few that were crying swallowing up the tears and moving forward. Keiji knows that she should say something to them, making them understand that it’s not their fault, that they gave the best of themselves and that she is proud of everyone of them, that Fukurodani losing is all Keiji’s fault.

She wants to apologize for not being as good captain as Bokuto, for not being as good setter as Karasuno’s, for not being able to fulfill her role. They finish dressing and Keiji sees how the team rounds up around her, all of them looking at her with a hunger for words, for something to make them feel better, something to make them feel that this defeat is not the end of everything.

“Tomorrow there won’t be club activity neither on Saturday . On Monday we’ll be back on normal schedule. You are free to go.” 

The first years look at her with wide and teary eyes. The second years look at her with a hint of annoyance, as if Keiji had somehow betrayed them. Her fellow third years just watch her with pity.

“You already heard the captain,” says Kirisaki, smiling sadly at the team. “Go home, rest. You did well.”

Keiji is the last one to leave the dressing room and nobody tries to talk to her. The first years because they are too busy crying, the second years probably because now they hate her and the third years because they know it’s best to leave her alone right now.

Once she’s alone in the dressing room, Akaashi rests her back against one of the lockers, sliding slowly to the floor and hiding her face behind her hands when the tears start to fall, uncontrollably.

Keiji feels herself trembling and even if she tries to contain her sobs they just get louder and louder, a horrible pain in her chest, all over her body.

They lost.

It’s not fair. They trained hard, they never missed any practice. They held a lot of training camps with other teams so they could get better, they recorded all their opponents so they could learn their plays. Keiji has been trying to be the better captain she could and they still lost, and much earlier that they have done in previous years.

How is she going to face Bokuto now? Keiji knows the girl is outside and that she saw everything, the horrible way in which Keiji played. Bokuto must have already come across some of the girls on the team and they must have told her the terrible captain Keiji is, the horrible way in which she dismissed them without even thanking them for their efforts.

How is she going to look at all the team in the face on Monday? She can’t… she can’t...

Keiji hears the door opening and, to his horror and humiliation, there is Bokuto, looking at her with sadness.

“Bokuto-san…” Keiji tries to talk, but her voice is cut off by a sob that comes out. In two steps Bokuto is beside her on the floor, pulling her against her chest and hugging her tightly.

“I know, Keiji, I know.”

“No… Bokuto-san, I’m sorry,” she says, crying, hiding her face against Bokuto’s shirt. “I’m sorry for failing you, Bokuto-san.”

“What are you talking about? Don’t be dumb, that’s my job.”

“I failed everyone, Bokuto-san. I’m not a good captain, I wasn’t able to take Fukurodani to victory.”

Bokuto kisses her head a several times, hugging her, embracing her, holding her as if she wanted them to melt into just one entity, as if trying to take all the pain away just with the power of her affection.

“You didn’t fail anyone, what are you talking about? Sometimes we lose, even I know that.”

“I wasn’t able to tell them anything, they must hate me now… I’m sorry, Bokuto-san…”

“Everything is going to be fine, Keiji, really.”

Bokuto stays with her, holding her and being the support Keiji needs until she finally calms down. In another time, maybe, she would appreciate how interesting is they way in which their roles shifted, how for one time it is not Bokuto the one to be comforted but her.

Right now the only thing she does is hug her old captain, her best friend, as if her life depended on it.

Keiji doesn’t want to go back home, she doesn’t want to face her parents and them to tell her that it was obvious that this would happen, how she should have joined another club, one that was more relevant to her life and not just a “waste of time” like the volleyball club. She wants to stay with Bokuto, she wants Bokuto to tell her how was her day at college and what crazy things happened at her job this week, to make Keiji forget how awful she feels right now.

She doesn’t want to go back home, she can’t do it like this.

“Bokuto-san?” Keiji calls her, once she already calmed and the other girl is braiding her hair, both sitting on a bench outside the stadium.

It is one of those rare summer afternoons where a cool breeze blows and people look at them weirdly, probably because Keiji has her face stained for all the crying she was doing.

“Yes?”

“Can I stay at your home tonight?”

Bokuto stops, a blush coloring her cheeks and her mouth open, the hair tie with which she was going to tie the end of her braid slipping off her hand. Keiji still feels terrible, but she can’t help to giggle a little.

Suddenly Bokuto hugs her again (and almost throws her off the bench), rubbing their faces and undoing the braid with all the fuss she's making.

“Of course you can, Keiji!”

On their way to Bokuto’s, Keiji sends her parents a text telling them that she’s not going home tonight because she’s staying at one of her friends and then she turns off her phone. She doesn’t want them to call her, she couldn’t bear to talk to them right now.

The only thing Keiji wants, at least for one night, is Bokuto’s company so she can sleep calmly, without nightmares to scare her and with the knowledge that next to her is someone who loves her unconditionally, no matter all the mistakes she makes.

***

“Congratulations on moving to the next round,” Kenma tells Shouyou as soon as the girls stops yelling in happiness. “I’m sorry for not going to see you, but I couldn’t miss school. Kuroo went and she told me that you played well.”

“ _Yesssss! It was awesome, Kenma!_ ” Shouyou says and on the screen Kenma can see how she jumps on the bed of her hotel room. “ _We have to meet before I go back to Miyagi!_ ”

“What about the day after tomorrow? Tomorrow I can’t because…”

“ _Oooooooh, riiight! YOUR DATE WITH KUROO!_ ”

“ _DON’T YELL SO MUCH, DUMBASS, WE’RE GONNA END BEING THROW OF THE HOTEL!_ ”

“ _YOU’RE YELLING TOO!_ ”

Suddenly Shouyou’s face tints with panic and Kenma can see how the girl tries to get off the bed, probably so she can run away, but she’s too slow and suddenly a dark thing falls on her, which Kenma supposes is a very pissed off Kageyama. A shiver runs down Kenma’s back. That’s material for her nightmares.

Both girls start to struggle on the bed, tossing and turning and pulling at each other’s hair. Kenma can see the picture on the screen swinging and she fears for the future of Shouyou’s laptop. Well, she also fears for _Shouyou’s_ future, but deep down she knows Kageyama wouldn’t intentionally harm her. Not much, at least.

Besides, when the girls come up again Kenma sees that they’re actually laughing and she suddenly feels uncomfortable watching this. Shouyou and Kageyama’s relationship is very weird and special and she doesn’t want to intrude on any intimate moment between them.

“Um, Shouyou?” Kenma calls her, trying to make both girls remember that she’s still here.

The girls stop abruptly, sitting up on the bed with their faces blushed and somewhat embarrassed. Well, then they _did_ forget she was here. She feels her own cheeks burn and this is almost worst than running into Tsukishima and Yamaguchi making out on the toilets.

“ _Kozume-san, good evening_ ,” greets her Kageyama and Kenma is grateful for the girl watching at the screen instead of the camera because otherwise she would be a little scared.

“Hello, Kageyama. Shouyou, want to talk another day?”

“ _No, no, no! Tell me how are you getting ready for you date! Pleeeeeease!_

Kageyama tilts her head, interested, and Kenma just wants to melt in her own bed.

“No, you two need to go to sleep so tomorrow you’ll be full of energy to win and…”

“ _It’s because of me? Do you want me to go so you can talk with the dumbass?_ ”

Kageyama’s open and innocent face lets Kenma know that the girl is being serious, that Kageyama is not trying to bother her or to stop Kenma and Shouyou’s chat. And, okay, it’s not as if Kenma really thought that Kageyama is a demon, just that she is a girl with a scary face and with really bad social skills. And who is Kenma to talk about socially awkward people?

That doesn’t mean that Kageyama no longer scares her, of course. But at least she can try to have a conversation with her, at least for Shouyou’s sake.

“Uh, no. It’s okay. I don’t know what to say, actually.”

“ _Where are you going?_ ” Shouyou asks, excited. “ _I never went on a date, but Noya-senpai and Tanaka-senpai say that it has to be “romantic yet hot”._ ”

Kageyama nods very convinced to all Shouyou says. Sometimes Kenma thinks Shouyou (and, apparently, Kageyama too) takes too seriously what her senpai say to her. Other times she’s plain sure of that fact.

“We’re gonna go buy _Mortal Kombat X_ , then to see that new movie about superheroes with the robot invasion and finally we’re gonna go eat somewhere, although we haven’t decided where yet…”

“ _That sounds better than all the things Tanaka-senpai says you’re supposed to do on a date_ ,” Kageyama says, to which Shouyou nods enthusiastically.

“ _Yes! It’s gonna be perfect, Kenma!_ ”

Kenma smiles, but it doesn’t last long. Both girls seem to be sure that it sounds like the perfect date, but it’s not as if they knew a lot about the these kind of things.

“Do you think so? I don’t know… Maybe… Maybe they won’t have the game and the movie’ll be horrible and… and maybe we won’t find any place to eat because we should have made a reservation before. Maybe… Maybe people will start to see us funny…”

“ _And what if they do that_ ”

“ _Kageyama!_ ”

Shouyou looks annoyed at her partner, but Kageyama doesn’t seem to have said it with bad intentions. Actually, she really seems like she doesn’t understands what the problem is with what she said.

“ _What? People always looks funny at us when we go out to do something but I don’t care. The point is to spend time with the other person, right? It’s the same if they don’t have the game and the movie is horrible and you don’t find where to have dinner. The important thing is that you’re going out with the person you like, right? I don’t think Kuroo-san cares if the date doesn’t go as planned as long as she’s with you… what?_ ”

Kenma closes her mouth, just now realizing that she has been gaping at Kageyama. In the screen Kageyama seems puzzled, while at her side Shouyou looks at her as if she couldn’t believe Kageyama is real.

“No, it’s nothing, you’re right. That’s the most important, but... what if Kuroo realizes that things between us are not going to work? I don’t want to… I don’t want to lose my best friend.”

“ _That’s not gonna happen!,_ ” yells Shouyou, startling Kageyama.

“ _I told you not to yell, dumbass!_ ”

“ _I’m sorry, I’m sorry. That’s not gonna happen, Kenma. Even if things don’t work as more than friends it’s impossible for Kuroo to turn her back to you._ ”

“ _Besides, if Tsukishima got Yamaguchi to still be with her you can also do the same with Kuroo. You’re a lot nicer than Tsukishima._ ”

“ _That’s right, that’s right!_ ”

“ _Don’t yell!_ ”

Kenma giggles while she watches on the screen how Kageyama and Shouyou start to roll and wrestle on the bed again. She’s still not sure that tomorrow’s date is going to go well, but the girls are right.

If Tsukishima could do it, how could she not be able to?

“Thanks for the support, Shouyou, Tobio.”

Kageyama’s red face is funny, no doubt, but even more so it’s Shouyou’s pout. Kenma will have to talk with her friend at some point about how she should also take that scary step in her weird relationship with Kageyama.

After all, it’s not as if Kageyama would say no.

“ _It was nothing, Kozume-san!_ ”

“ _Now you’re the one yelling!_ ”

“Good night, guys,” Kenma says, but she’s sure the girls don’t hear her because they are rolling on the bed again.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> Come say hello [to my tumblr](http://kikinuinthefandom.tumblr.com/) if you want :)


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